Twits and Twitter

Oh, dear. Some people just don't know when to, like, shut up:

A highlight of her invective was, perhaps: "Because people, like, honestly, like, I mean people wanna know why, like, you're, like, unhealthy, and, like, you need, like, get out and do stuff and, like, be in the world instead of being like this (pretends to be hunched over a keyboard) all the time. And, like, all I did was, like, lay in bed all the time."

I know there will be some who might fear that Miley has removed herself from Twitter because the 140 character limit did not allow her full expression of her likes and thoughts.

In case you weren't, like, totally sure, that was, like, Miley Cyrus opining on the future of Twitter, or rather her preferred lack of same.

It is unclear to my why I would care what she thinks about Twitter, but then, I'm pretty much a Twitter naysayer. I have a Twitter account. I think I've "tweeted" about 6 or 8 times in a couple of years. I rarely look at what others tweet. Perhaps I'm not spending enough time hunched over a keyboard.

I realize that celebrities are entitled to their opinions, just like everybody else. And I'm entitled to, like, ignore them, just like everybody else.

I know this wasn't important, but I thought the article quoted above had some high-quality snark, which I always enjoy. I couldn't bring myself to watch the video, but the text amused me.

Small World

Now and then you cross paths with someone from a long time ago.

That happened to me a lot this past weekend, but you expect it at a high school reunion. I didn't expect to see NPR interviewing one of my favorite teachers from college:

SARAH GARDNER: Well, laugh all you want, Sam, but old, dead tree stumps are actually clues to climate past. Listen to this:

SCOTT STINE: These stumps tell us that California is capable of experiencing droughts more profound and more persistent than anything that we've seen during the last 150 years.

GARDNER: Now, that's paleoclimatologist Scott Stine. He looks at past climate to help figure out future climate. And scientists are really interested in this kind of work because, if they can understand climate shifts in the past, the hope is that that will help them more accurately project what may be in store for us this time around.

Scott was a lecturer in Environmental Science when I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley. His class on Bay Area Environments was memorable for many reasons, not least of which was Scott himself. He was like a walking encyclopedia of natural history for the area, and it's nice to see that his ongoing research on Mono Lake and other places is still paying off for him.

Check out the slide show linked from the NPR page. Hearing Scott's narration was fun, and it brought back lots of memories from taking his classes. Coincidentally, I had been talking about Scott this weekend with one of my high school friends who also took his class in college. Small world, indeed!

Cruciferous Vegetables

I just need to get this off my chest: What's with broccoflower? And more to the point, why is it that Japanese restaurants insist on hiding it in their vegetable tempura? I bite into something that looks like a nice, tasty piece of tempura broccoli, and it turns out to be a disgusting, green cauliflower.

Is broccoflower just some sort of attempt to woo people who won't eat disgusting cauliflower by making it look like some kind of tasty green vegetable?

Yuck. I know cauliflower is supposed to be good for you, so I assume broccoflower is, too. But really: yuck.

My broken State, Part V

We used to educate our children. Now, not so much:

And all of this was going to be free for Californians. It was an investment in the future, and it paid off, big-time. The quality graduates that came out of this public education system helped to grow the California economy at a pace far outstripping the rest of the nation. Some like to call the 20th Century the American Century, well, if that was true, the last half of the 20th Century was the California Century.

But like all good centuries, they come to an end. And with the election of Ronald Reagan, and later Deukmejian and Wilson, and to an extent, even Brown's son Jerry, the Master Plan has been gradually chipped away. As we stand right now, of the approximately $18 Billion UC budget, around $3 Billion now comes from the state.

In other words, the state university system is merely a somewhat-state-subsidized system, and barely that.

Great quote at the end of the piece from George Lakoff:

Lakoff, UC Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and author of several popular and scholarly books on the language of politics, said in a letter to UCB's Townsend Center that "the privatization issue goes well beyond public education. It is about whether we have a democracy that works for the common good, or a plutocracy that privileges the wealthy and powerful. Privatizing the world's greatest public university is a giant step away from democracy."(Berkeley Daily Planet 9/17/09)

As a product of California's public-education heyday, all the way from kindergarten through college, I have a great appreciation for what we used to have. And I'm appalled that the state (both the people and their elected government) no longer seems to value public education.

Journalism

Sorry for not writing much of late. Not that I don't have a lot to say; just don't have time to write it down here.

Stumbled across this piece, though, which I thought did a good job of explaining why you have to be very dubious of everything you read and hear. The people we grew up trusting to tell us what was going on in the world don't do their job very well. It's much less an issue of bias (although some exists) and more a case of laziness mixed with incompetence.

Excellent stuff at the end of the piece:

At the beginning of his article, Von Drehle referred to a recent poll that found "record-low levels of public trust of the mainstream media." Guess what? Articles like this are why nobody trusts the media. When you pretend that obviously false claims about crowd sizes are valid, people won't trust you. When you pretend that only liberals say 70,000 people actually attended last week's protest, people won't trust you. They shouldn't trust you. You aren't trustworthy. You are doing your job dishonestly and incompetently.

And that dishonesty, that incompetence, is what enables Glenn Beck. When Glenn Beck says 1.7 million people were at the protest, and the Washington, D.C., Fire Department says 70,000, and Time runs an article saying conservatives and liberals disagree about the crowd size, that enables Glenn Beck's lies.

Being a mouthpiece for liars of any political stripe is not journalism. Reporting the lies without saying whether they are, objectively speaking, true, is not journalism, either. *sigh*

Apparently some people (including people who are supposed to be journalists) really believe that everything is just a matter of opinion, that there are no objective facts. They are wrong.

Another Dramatic Day

Following another delicious breakfast at Morning Glory (I had a coconut almond waffle with lemon butter...wonderful!) we headed off to a last busy day at the Shakespeare Festival. First was the afternoon with "All's Well that Ends Well." This was a good production, although not entirely to the liking of our 8-year-old. She got it, though. She and Grandma had done some studying last night while we were off seeing Henry VIII, so she knew what to expect. Some bits (particularly when the French king got a bit long-winded) were not really able to hold her interest.

I thought the play was pretty well done. My favorite actor was probably Lafew, who had wonderful stage presence and great, expressive eyes. The repertory aspect was in view again, as the Clown/narrator (an invention of the director, which worked well) turned out to be none other than Don Quixote from our first play of this trip. He was amusing in this role, and worked very hard, too.

After a brief stroll through the art and craft fair along Ashland Creek, we had some ice cream at Mix, then a quick visit to the Tudor Guild gift shop, as we wanted to pick up a couple of items.

We then dropped off Grandma and our daughter for a visit with some cousins, and Jan and I went to dinner. We started with a little wine tasting at the EdenVale Enoteca, but weren't too impressed with any of the wines. So we stolled off to dine at the Ashland Bistro Cafe, which was quite good. Jan's scallop carbonara was particularly good.

Then to the final play of this trip, "Equivocation." In many ways this was the perfect conclusion to the trip, and it particularly helped to have seen Macbeth and Henry VIII beforehand. All in all, it was outstanding, with a cast of six players, five of whom play many, many roles. I believe we had seen all of them in other productions during the week, notably Anthony Heald (who we'd previously seen as Mayor Shinn in The Music Man and Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII) as Shagspeare and Jonathan Haugen (Gardiner in Henry VIII) as (mostly) Robert Cecil.

Intense, thought-provoking, and clever, I thought this was the best play we saw overall, and probably worth the trip all by itself. Two big thumbs up!

Now the theater part of the trip is done, and we're driving home tomorrow. I doubt I'll have anything to write about that, but one never knows.

Wandering Through History

Today was largely a day off, with free time to explore town. Since we didn't have theater tickets until evening, we spent a leisurely morning at the house, then headed across town to try breakfast at Brother's. The breakfast was okay, nothing really special, but the hot chai was quite excellent and the house-made scones were stellar. Tomorrow we'll probably be back at Morning Glory, mostly because of proximity.

Since we were in town after breakfast, we decided it was time to venture into some of the used book stores. First stop, Book Exchange, which is my kind of bookstore: unpretentious, and obviously staffed by bibliophiles. All four of us had a grand time shopping around, and I think each of us came out with at least two books. I found a Fred Pohl book I was previously unaware of, and another book by Allen Steele. I definitely need to read more science fiction!

Next stop was a pilgrimage to the Dagoba Organic Chocolate outlet, just outside town. Dagoba makes tasty organic chocolate, and they have quite a bit out for tasting. The woman running the tasting room was friendly and knowledgeable, and went out of her way to give us tastes of a couple of things that were not already set out. We bought quite a few bars of different flavors, several of which we were previously unaware of.

On from there to what bills itself as the world's biggest, best-stocked game store, Fun Again. I guess they have a well-stocked warehouse behind the retail section, but the store itself is not huge (though it is very well-stocked). Ultimately we didn't decide to buy any games, but it was fun to look around.

Then across the parking lot to yet another (mostly) used book store, Bookwagon. I thought they had less overall selection than Book Exchange, and not nearly the ambiance, but we did manage to find several more books to buy. My favorite, which I stumbled across on the new arrivals rack, was a copy of John Muir's The Velvet Monkey Wrench. I learned most of what I know about automobiles from Muir's classic "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive," so I've always been intrigued to read his Utopian prescription for living. We'll see how that turns out.

After a brief stopover at the house to rest up and change clothes, we ventured out to dinner. Somehow, after brunch and chocolate tasting, no one was all that hungry, but we knew we wouldn't survive the evening's play without sustenance. So we decided to try Greenleaf restaurant. The food was pretty ordinary, but might have seemed more impressive had we chosen to sit outside, along the creek. The BLT was worth eating, though.

And at last, off to the theater, where Jan and I saw "Henry VIII" at the Elizabethan Stage. It was quite impressive. We had to overcome a little cognitive dissonance, as the early scenes featured Buckingham, who last night was Professor Harold Hill, and Cardinal Wolsey, who was last night's tongue-tied mayor. Of course, this is both one of the joys and one of the drawbacks to a repertory company. It was momentarily distracting, but ultimately fine.

It's quite a staging of the play, majestic and full of pomp. In the end, I suppose the play is really more about Wolsey and Queen Katherine than about Henry, really (though he's obviously an important part). And more than any of the characters, it's about England and the struggle between the Catholic church and protestantism, which would quite literally tear at the fabric of the country for at least a couple more centuries. Of all the Shakespeare histories, this one might be the most complex in that it deals with such recent events at the time of its writing. (Forgive me if all this is obvious; I hadn't read or seen this play before tonight!)

Anyway, some very strong performances here. Wolsey was particularly good in the second act, when he's largely in monologue mode. He had some trip-ups in the first act with dialogue, but really shone in his solo spotlights. Katherine was quite powerful (although I thought he deathbed scene was probably the weakest part of the play). And Henry had his moments. I thought his silent scene during Katherine's speech at her trial was particularly good. He really conveyed a lot by his physical reactions.

All in all, a very worthy effort. We really enjoyed the play, and it hardly seemed to take an hour, much less two-and-a-half!

We ended the evening with a quick visit to Zoey's Cafe for ice cream. Very tasty gelato. I had the mystery rotator tonight, which was a chocolate and marshmallow with coconut. Very yummy!

One more long day tomorrow, with two plays, then we head home Sunday.

A Study in Contrasts

Nice day today. A little cooler than yesterday (though still quite hot by my coastal standards). Yet another breakfast at Morning Glory, where I learned that gingerbread waffles are indeed as good as they sound on the menu!

Best news of the day is that my daughter's bee-stung foot is much, much better. Indeed, she's bouncing around as good as new. This makes for a much happier day for all!

Today was a two-play day for some of us, which is a lot of sitting in the theater, but the two plays couldn't be much more different, so that helped.

The afternoon play was "Macbeth." Macbeth and I go way back. I read it in high school English class, and have seen it produced a couple of times since, most memorably in the outdoor glade at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, back when I lived down that way. An outdoor, nighttime performance is a great setting for Macbeth, with all its witches and general mayhem.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's rendition of Macbeth is somewhat updated, at least in costuming. And I frankly had a little trouble following all they were trying to do with the costumes. But the power and intensity of the play really comes through. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were tremendous, and gave a depth and variety to their performances that was intriguing and kept one's interest focused.

I should add a note about the superstition surrounding Macbeth. I gather some in the theater believe the play to be jinxed, and refuse to say the name of it out loud, just calling it "The Scottish Play." I find this amusing. I learned about the superstition from some friends in conjunction with another, while sitting at a baseball game. I made an oblique reference to the fact that a pitcher had not allowed any hits by the other team (I think it was about the fifth or sixth inning by then), and was soundly admonished by a neighbor that I was not to refer to such things, as I would jinx it. Another neighbor, overhearing, suddenly burst out with "It's the Scottish play! It's the Scottish play!" Took me a while to get the full explanation, and I was surprised to learn of this supposed jinx.

For what it's worth, I have still never seen a no-hitter live, and I'm sure some will blame the fact that I am willing to talk about the possibility, even while the game is still under way. But I don't believe in jinxes. Sorry for anyone disappointed by that.

In between we went to dinner at the Standing Stone Brewing Company, which has very good beer and quick enough service that we were able to make it up to the show with time to spare. The burgers were OK, but nothing special. We liked the sweet potato fries, of course.

In the evening we all went to see "The Music Man," which is obviously much lighter and more fun. The actor playing Professor Harold Hill was quite good, with a strong voice and good stage presence. He makes a fine con man! His counterpart playing Marion Paroo has a lovely voice, though perhaps not as clearly articulated as I might want (though I know the songs well enough that I didn't lose much). I have to say she also seems just a bit...well...old for the part. She's meant to be 26, and I peg her for quite a few years more than that. As Jan put it, a bit old to be playing the ingenue.

But the play just works. I like the staging, despite being a relatively small stage (indeed, the exact same stage on which we saw Macbeth just hours earlier). They manage to fill it without making it seem crowded, so the small town of River City seems fairly realistic (within stage conventions, of course). I also really liked the way the started with the whole town and its people being entirely gray and drab, with little bits of color introduced as Hill and his scheme take hold in town. By the end, the whole town is a gay festival, and the contrast is quite striking.

This is our first venture into Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but I gather that musicals are relatively rare here. If that's true, then I thought they did it quite well. The music was good, and most of the singing quite good. I thought the adaptation of the space to include a spot for the conductor to poke up was well done and unobtrusive. All in all, I really liked the way they were able to pop different scenes in without breaking the flow of the play.

So it was a day of very stark contrast between the plays, but interestingly, I found myself drawing more comparisons between Music Man and Don Quixote than with Macbeth. In part, I suppose it's because they touch on somewhat similar themes, each dealing with the difference (or lack thereof) between reality and imagination, or the ability of imagination and belief to shape reality. Ultimately, I guess that is a theme that resonates with me more than Macbeth's venture into ambition, prophecy, and gore. I thought Macbeth was the best performance of the three shows we've seen so far (with three more to go), and it will certainly stick with me. But I like the other two a lot more, if that makes sense.

All in all a good day, but a tiring one. Tomorrow is an easy day, with only an evening performance of "Henry VIII" for a couple of us. Then Saturday will be another two-play day. So I better get some rest!

Hot as Hell in Ashland

We drove up to Ashland, Oregon, last night because we have a bunch of tickets to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This is a particular treat, not only because it's our only family vacation for the summer, but also because Jan and I have been meaning to come up here for years, and only this year managed to arrange it.

So, first a few road trip notes, then we'll talk theater.

The drive up isn't too bad. We made it in 6.5 hours, including a stop for dinner and refueling. The first part is pretty much rote for us, as it's the same route we take to go skiing, but then branches northward through the central valley, and that was territory I've never driven, and only been a passenger on long, long ago. Might have been prettier in the daytime, but it was certainly cooler in the evening.

After an uneventful drive (with a soundtrack of the books-on-CD of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"), we arrived in Ashland just before 1:00 am, greeted enthusiastically by our daughter, who has been off traveling with Grandma for a couple of weeks. She gave us the grand tour of the little house we've swapped for, and eventually we all settled down and headed for bed.

Needless to say (I hope), we all slept in quite late in the morning, and after checking a few recommendations from my Facebook friends, headed out for the short walk to brunch at the Morning Glory Restaurant. That was a great find, especially as it is only about two blocks from the house. On the plus side, great food (marionberry syrup!!!) and nice service. On the minus side, it was flippin' HOT out. I mean, well into the 90s (F). Obnoxiously hot, really. No wonder they call the place Ashland--it's obviously all burned up long ago. Sheesh!

It being hot, some of us thought we ought to go out and find some way to cool off in the afternoon (and perhaps work off some of the big brunch). After checking out the nearby city park that has a small water play area (it looked way too hot, despite the water) we decided to head up to the reservoir outside town. The water level's pretty low, but it was a fun little swim for those (unlike yours truly) who had remembered to pack swim suits. I sat under a shade tree and read a book about avalanches.

All was well until after the swimming, when our daughter ran afoul of a bee or two, and got stung on two toes. Ouch! We managed to get some first-aid help from the park ranger, but decided it was best to head home, where some ice and rest seemed to make things better.

As we headed out to get some dinner before our first play, it became clear that additional first aid was necessary. The nearby Safeway pharmacy had nothing helpful, but we had ten minutes to get to the real pharmacy downtown, and we made it. They had some helpful salve and dressings, and all seemed in order. We got to the festival area, found a quick bite at Martino's (lobster ravioli!) and made it into the play with a few minutes to spare.

Tonight we were seeing "Don Quixote" at the open-air Elizabethan Stage. It's a nice theater, and I'm looking forward to seeing some actual Shakespeare there later in the week (Henry VIII, I think). It would be really hot in there in the daytime, but for an evening show it was great. Never having read or seen Don Quixote or any of its derivatives (I've heard the soundtrack to Man of La Mancha, but never seen it), I wasn't sure what to expect. And the more people told me, the more I questioned bringing an 8-year-old with us.

As it turned out, she didn't like it, and got quite bored early in the first act. She and Jan went out at intermission to explore the neighborhood, so Grandma and I watched the second act without them. They had a grand time checking out places, including the sweet shop, and met us at the end of the play with some cupcakes they'd gotten for free at closing time!

So, about the play. It's quite an interesting presentation. It captures well the difficulty of distinguishing reality from imagination, especially where fiction is involved. Many of the imaginary bits are played with puppets, many of which are clever and cute. The players walk a tight line between the clownish and the sincerely comical, and for the most part it works well. The character I found most interesting in many ways is the one labeled "The Cervantes Avatar," who keeps returning in various incarnations, often making awful puns.

It was fun (in spite of the boredom of the younger generation), and a fine introduction to the festival. Tomorrow we have two plays: Jan and I see "Macbeth" in the afternoon, and the whole family will see "The Music Man" in the evening.

Reform What, Exactly?

The most frustrating thing about the ongoing current "debates" over "health care reform" is that there isn't actually any discussion of reforming health care. At most, it's a discussion of health-care finance reform. But with the best option for that excluded. So maybe, just maybe, we could call it health insurance reform. But we won't, and people will get frightened that somehow this will get in the way of their relationship with their doctor. When in fact, the current insurance system does a lot more of that. My doctor complains all the time about all the paperwork he has to do in lieu of actually caring for patients.

Imagine that...we could fix the financing system so that doctors could spend more of their time and attention dealing with actual health care!

Yet another surreal moment in our political discourse.

Such as it is.

Police FAIL

Riding through downtown San Francisco yesterday on the way to a trade show at Moscone Center, we noticed what appeared to be some college-age guys riding on the back of a van. Not too smart that. As we got closer, we noticed a couple of things about this stunt: a) the riders were doing this without the knowledge or permission of the driver, and b) the van belongs to the SFPD.


Sorry about the finger in the picture. I only had a moment to fish out the phone and snap the photo; both cars were moving at the time.

My best guess is that this was a fraternity initiation or something similar. Riding the back bumper of a van through city traffic is extremely dangerous, of course, but just the sort of thing kids of that age would try. But on the back of a police van? And what does it say about the driver that she was unaware of what was going on? As the hipsters say on the Interwebs these days: FAIL.

My Broken State, Part IV

It's bad. It's really bad. As usual, Digby says it better than just about anyone:

The system is broken and nobody couldn't have headed this off entirely. But I'm afraid that we are going to have to reform more than the state constitution to fix things. We need to reform politics itself somehow, convince people that it isn't American Idol or the World Series, or the ruling class will always be able to afford to put on a show whenever they need to manipulate the folks and the folks will probably fall for it.

She also refers to a Calitics post from this morning, detailing the degree of damage being done to the state today:

Democrats have caved and given Arnold Schwarzenegger what he wanted - a cuts-only budget that does massive and lasting damage to the state of California, to the people who live here, and to our collective future. It's taken 31 years, but Howard Jarvis is finally going to get the wholesale destruction of public services he always wanted.

As a nearly lifelong resident of the state, it pains me to see the deterioration in services and facilities. We had wonderful schools, parks, and programs when I was growing up, and now we have potholes, graffiti, and homeless people living in the streets. There is still a lot of great stuff here, but we've got some big, big messes to clean up.

I hope we can muster the will.

Truth, Stranger than Fiction

This is an amazing story. Even if you don't like baseball, there are some amazing elements.

It's impossible to know with certainty, of course, but considering all the evidence, it's very likely that Steve Dalkowski was the hardest-throwing pitcher in the history of baseball.

Wow. How come I never heard of him? He never reached the major leagues! How is that? Oh...

Quite simply, the problem was Dalkowski's control, or more precisely his utter lack of it. If there's reason to question whether Dalkowski's velocity was unmatched in history, there's really none to doubt his wildness. Not only has there never been another professional pitcher who achieved feats of wildness equal to Dalkowski's, there's never been another pitcher who came remotely close.

The page then recounts an amazing litany of accomplishments, starting with this:

- In high school, he had an 18-strikeout, 18-walk no-hitter.

But even more:

- In one extra-inning game in the Eastern League, Dalkowski struck out 27 batters and walked 16 while throwing 283 pitches.

- One time he was pulled in the second inning after throwing 120 pitches.

It just keeps going. And to top it off, there is a litany of brutal alcohol abuse and such. Just an amazing story, and all true.

Thanks to Paul Campos at LGM for pointing out this great item. I like his closing comment:

Apparently he didn't hit many batters, which I suppose is a tribute to the speed of human reflexes when survival is at stake.

What could I add to that?

My Broken State, Part III

Oh, wait...it's not just about my state anymore (h/t to Atrios):

California is the state in the worst shape, and it’s also the state no one wants to help, because its problems stem from terrible institutions and a horribly dysfunctional government. They’re not just cyclically screwed; they worked very hard to get themselves into this mess, and the rest of America, quite reasonably, doesn’t want to bail them out. But this is a problem for the rest of America, because rare is the state that couldn’t use some additional help right about now.

It's true. California is so broken that it's going to make it really, really hard to fix the national economy. It's not going to be pretty, people.

New Firefox with a Personal Twist

Mozilla has released Firefox 3.5 today. It's no secret to anyone who has perused this blog page that I'm a Firefox fan, and I'm pleased to see that 3.5 will be faster and more memory conscious.

As an additional, personal note, Mozilla has added a dashboard page (that will not work with Internet Explorer, because it doesn't support the open standards that enable the live page updates) that lets you see in real time how many Firefox downloads are happening and where they are going.

I mention this because at the bottom of the page is a logo that says "Powered by SQLstream," which is my little startup company. It's our first real public splash like that, and we're quite excited about it.

What's in a Nickname?

I was tickled to see this article, pointed out by a friend I worked with in D.C., years ago:

If you want to score a meeting with Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), know this: His scheduler/office manager, Elizabeth Becton, is to be addressed by her full name — not Liz or any other variant.

It goes on to detail a rather lengthy and heated exchange over how this person wishes to be addressed. And while I don't particularly appreciate the heat of some of the messages in the exchange (there is definitely a level at which this particular issue is getting in the way of her doing her job effectively), I can certainly relate to the level of frustration.

Probably the single most irritating thing about working on Capitol Hill for me was the glad-handing and false intimacy that was affected by many, and especially lobbyists. Dealing with lobbyists is part of the game, of course, but that doesn't mean they should be able to just assume they can call you by the nickname of their choice.

I realize that some of this is generational, but when I introduced myself as "Richard," it was irritating in the extreme to have the introducee come back and call me "Dick." Not my nickname: never was, never will be. My friends knew I was "Chard," but professionally, I would use my more formal name, if only to avoid having to explain my nom de vegetable to someone who was only a casual acquaintance.

I suppose part of it is an introvert thing: I don't share personal stuff with just anyone. Letting someone call me by my chosen nickname is a way of controlling my personal space. People who call me Chard (mostly) know me. People who call me Dick definitely do not.

I won't claim this is the only or even the main reason I decided to get out of the political life, but it was certainly a factor. The whole question of who owns my identity is actually important to me, and I didn't like the assumption by others that they could decide who I was.

It makes for an interesting step into a forum such as this blog, where my ramblings are available to virtually anyone. In practice, the only ones reading this are, in fact, my friends and family, and you all know me as Chard. Heaven forbid this should ever become "popular," leading all the unwashed masses to my doorstep, armed with my preferred name.

No danger there, I think.

But it's true that this is a personal blog, a place where it's safe to be Chard. I would have to think really hard about what to do if I were to write serious or professional material here. Luckily for you, I don't step into that very often!

Programmer Humor

Just skip this if you're not a geek. Really.

Cute blog post someone pointed me to a couple of weeks ago, and I'm just now getting to pass it along. It's a humorous time line of programming languages.

I quite liked this bit:

1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.

1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.

Update: I just clicked through to another post the same guy wrote about diving with a whale shark. He's a pretty amusing writer:

But this was one big krill swilling machine. He was big enough that an accidental bump would be like an accidental bump from a large dump truck - a large dump truck with a mouth the size of a Volkswagen.

Still, Brian and I were determined. So we quickly squashed down our near-pathological fear of dump trucks and swam towards the magnificent creature.

My Broken State, Part II

There will be plenty more where this comes from, sad to say.

Good posting on Calitics today by Robert Cruickshank about why raising taxes is preferable to (the inevitable, common wisdom) cutting spending (credit to Atrios, an actual economist, for pointing it out). Short take:

How will budget cuts help promote economic growth?

It's a question that I rarely ever see asked, and one that is never answered, certainly not in a state where the conventional wisdom is that revenue increases are impossible, even though we've never tried to make them happen. Instead the supposed "political reality" of no new taxes is trumping the economic reality that taxes are preferable to spending cuts in a recession. The result is that spending cuts are treated as inevitable even though they are a sure path to Depression.

I'm not saying he's absolutely right or anything, but I'd say it's a clear sign of how broken things are that no one is even raising the question as part of the "debate" on what to do about the broken budget.

Here's a hint for those in the state legislature: You can't win if you don't even play the game. It's unclear that they even know they're supposed to be in one.

Happy World Oceans Day!

Just a quick post because I'm busy, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned World Oceans Day. This year marks the first time World Oceans Day is an officially-recognized, international holiday.

The short history is that Canada proposed World Ocean Day in 1992 at the Earth Summit, and various folks have been celebrating and observing it for a number of years (including local celebrations coordinated by a group I work with, COARE). Just this year the United Nations declared World Oceans Day (including adding the "s" to "Ocean") as a worldwide holiday to celebrate the ocean.

So take a moment today to ponder the ocean that covers nearly 3/4 of the surface of our planet. This is not a political event or an excuse to support a particular cause. The ocean means something different to everyone, but it's also critically important to everyone in the world. So regardless of whether you agree with my particular issues (such as shark conservation, marine protected areas, ocean-bound waste, marine mammal conservation, coral reef protection), this is a great day to think about what the ocean means to you and your life, and think about what you can do for it.

Portrait of an Obscure Vegetable

My friend Rod passed this along. I thought it was relatively hilarious:

In our last episode of “Weird Veggies I Have Known and Learned to Love”, we talked kohlrabi; today it’s that ‘not quite celery – where’s the beet’ thing called Swiss Chard. Chard suffers from a branding problem - how good does it feel saying the word “chard”?

I think my favorite bit is the notion that someone has a series of "Weird Veggies I Have Known," etc. But I'm unclear on what's so unpleasant about that particular name.

And this:

Try it. Then try it again. Learn to like chard. If you have to tell yourself ‘It’s good for me’, then so be it. It IS good for you. Put more colorful and flavorful veggies into your diet. It really IS good for you.

I have a confession: I've never liked the stuff, myself. But it is very good for you. You should buy it or grow it and eat it. Lots of it.

This post reminded me of a column by Gerald Nachman I read back when I was in high school. (I had no idea he was from Oakland!) I believe it started with the sentence, "Unfortunately, chard is very good for you." It later quoted laboratory rats who were part of FDA tests as saying "I'd rather be dead than eat this stuff anymore." Quite humorous.

Anyway, chard is a fine vegetable and gets a bad rap. Just because I don't like it, there's no reason you shouldn't eat a lot of it. Now go and be healthy.